


Shattered & Tarnished

by Areiton



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Season/Series 12, Angst, Apocalypse, Bunker Fic, Case Fic, Cross-Posted on Wattpad, Dean Winchester - Freeform, Domestic Fluff, Fluff, Hunting, M/M, Men of Letters, Sam Winchester - Freeform, Season/Series 11 Spoilers, castiel - Freeform, child fic, mary is alive
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-21
Updated: 2016-11-16
Packaged: 2018-07-25 22:42:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 12,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7550098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Areiton/pseuds/Areiton
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Chuck & Amara left, they tipped the balance. A power vacuum that needed to be filled. And with nothing to fill it, the world reached for the old gods.<br/>The sleeping gods.<br/>Sam and Dean Winchester get two months. Two months of peace and rebuilding their family. Castiel is there, more often than not, guiding Heaven, but wanting little part in the restructure of power.<br/>They get two months of quiet and apple pie life, and a chance with someone whose been lost to them for decades.<br/>When peace shatters, it shatters spectacularly.<br/>A new threat is blowing in from the Northeast, spreading death in its wake, and it’s got its sights set on the Winchesters.<br/>And then Heaven complicates things in the form of a child. A little girl named Lucy, with an angel’s grace and a devil’s smile and no fucking clue what the hell is living inside her vessel.<br/><b> On Temporary Hiatus</b></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A New Day & An Old Dreamer

Once. A very long time ago. I ruled a realm and was called queen. My very name was death.

That was, admittedly, a long time ago.

The world is different. I can taste the difference as I wake. It feels alien on my tongue and I lick my lips and taste iron and magic and blood and darkness and light.

And death.

So much death.

They are gone, and it clenches in my belly, this indisputable truth.

God and his sister are _gone._

The world has not ended and I am awake, after a thousand years and ice and death. I shudder and reach for --

A hand clenches around mine, rough claws and velvet soft skin and I almost whimper because I _know_ that grasp.

A hundred thousand years and more could pass and I could never forget the way his hand feels wrapped like silk and knives around mine.

He pulls me up and I get my first look at the world as I land in his arms.

Wild and untamed and _small_.

But the world fades away, narrows to the two arms and solid chest that braces me. He's shuddering. His voice hoarse and low, a throaty growl in my ear. “Sister,” he whispers and everything that feels wrong. All that feels alien and _other_ fades away.

In his arms, it doesn't matter because his arms have always meant home and family and safe.

My earliest memories were sitting in the circle of my brother’s arms. Half asleep while I pet his shaggy hair and listened to father spin stories.

“I missed you,” I whisper into his neck and he whines, nipping at my shoulder. His shaking and shuddering around me. Barely clinging to his human shape and I loosen my grip on him. Force myself a step away. He glares at me, but it's more pout than ire and I smirk. “How long has it been?”

“I woke two weeks ago.”

I feel a sharp fission of rage and I turn an arch glare on him. His lips curl back and I resist the urge to smack him across the nose.

Fenrir always hated when I did that, would nip my fingers and I would snarl and stamp my feet and father would laugh, all sly amusement.

“Fens-”

I shift away from him and tug my hair back, frowning because I realize what's wrong with this little homecoming.

Aside from the obvious--that I am awake and Fenrir is smirking with too sharp teeth and eyes so tired that I feel a sharp spike of worry and reach for my own power.

It's weak. Barely there. The dead. My kingdom lingers out of reach and untouchable.

And father is not here.

I look at him, my older brother, a god meant to bring on end Ragnarok. The son of the smartest trickster to ever walk Valhalla.

We were his favorites. Maybe because his stories were our favorites.

Gods need worship, after all, and we hung on his words, ever last honey dipped twisted tale. And he hung on us and every wretched perfect thing we ever did.

The first time I stole a soul and felt that delicious, addicting stab of power. They were at my side.

The first time Fens turned and whimpered in a corner under the bed, I was there to coax him out and cuddle him while our father let him lick honey mead from his fingers and teased his tail until Fens finally shifted back to the petulant little boy I knew so well.

For years beyond counting, I knew two things.

My power terrified even the gods.

And my brother and father would never leave me.

We were three outcasts in Odin’s court and we found a home together.

“Where is he, fens? Where is father?”

Rage and grief, so desolate it could destroy worlds and flashes across his face and I feel the empty alien world fall from under my feet as he whispers, “He's dead, Hel. Loki is dead.”


	2. Sacrifice & Miracles

Chapter 2. Sacrifice & Miracles.

 

The world kept turning.

That's the long and short of it. They were prepared--always prepared--to go down swinging. To take themselves to pieces to put the world back together. To bend even the gods to their own damn will, because the _world_ deserved better.

It's what they did. What Winchesters did. Saving people. Hunting things.

***

The fact is none of them expected to walk away. Oh, Sam promised Dean not to do anything rash. That he would have a stupid funeral for his stupid brother. And he knew Dean well enough to know Dean was marching to his death dreaming of Sam fat and old and retired, with a dog and a blonde and a kid or something equally ridiculous.

It's a problem Dean had--he never could remember when Sam out grew things.

He outgrew the dream of _normal_ somewhere between the guilt of leaving his brothers in purgatory and the weight of the trials.

But Dean marched out to face the Darkness with a hundred thousand souls burning in his chest and Sam? Quietly plotted how he would end it. A gun, a single round, when Cas was away.

Not when Cas was there. It wouldn't be fair to the angel.

Not that any of this was fair.

But then. An amazing thing happened. Even for a Winchester, it was a miracle.

****

Cas wasn't stupid. He knew exactly what Sam planned. He just couldn't be bothered to stop him. He almost wanted to hand him a gun and an angel blade and ask that they go together.

If he couldn’t go with Dean, perhaps Sam would grant him that one last thing…

He has spent too many years with the Winchester brothers to imagine a world without them. The world didn't end. It spun stupid and slow and infuriating and he wanted to scream and to throw it into the sun, wanted to blast his grace through every city that ranted about the sun's odd behavior and stupid, ridiculous scientific explanations.

He wanted to paint Dean's face on their eyes in blood and ash, because if he must die to save them, they should _know._

They should _care._

He can feel himself fraying.

He knows that he is as on edge as when he held every soul in purgatory. And just as dangerous.

Desperate men with nothing to lose are the scary kind of dangerous.

Desperate angels are worse.

He shivers as he steps into the bunker behind Sam, and feels the heavy, empty air. Feels Sam’s fury and despair.

“Sam,” he starts to say, but the Winchester is cutting him off, shaking his big shaggy head, and Castiel falls silent.

Dean called him _brother_ before he left. But Sam is the true brother, and Cas feels like an unwanted intruder on his grief.

He turns away.

 

****

 

Dean isn’t sure which is more amazing. That he just _talked_ Chuck and Amara away from the ledge, or that he’s alive. He stumbles through the underbrush with no fucking clue where he is, and a deep need to get back to Kansas.

Glances at his phone again--still no service.

Amara said she was going to give him what he needed most. And then she was gone and so was Chuck and he was in the middle of fucking nowhere with no cell service and a brother who thinks he’s dead.

“This might be worse than purgatory,” he mutters, and stumbles a little further on.

There’s a road.

Fucking thank Chuck, there’s a road. He’s so excited, he almost kisses it.

But. There’s also--

A woman. Walking toward him in a white nightgown, her eyes blown wide with fear and confusion and yep. That.

 _That_ stops him dead in his tracks, his heart pounding too fast.

Is this what Amara meant? God’s sister _could_ do this, but--why?

_I’m going to give you what you need most._

He almost crumples, because fuck if she doesn’t look every goddamn inch the same as she did, all those years ago.

He takes an involuntary step toward her, all instincts failing, as he whispers, _“Mom?”_

And she smiles. A tiny, tremulous thing, as he rushes into her arms.

She gasps, catching him as he wraps around her, and he can already feel himself breaking apart, and then everything shifts.

From too close, and yet very far away, he hears Sam.

“ _Dean!”_

 

* * *

 

_Six Weeks Later._

“What I don’t understand,” Dean says, from under the ugly as fuck Lincoln Continental, “Is _why_ the fuck you swerved into a ditch. It was an empty road, Cas.”

“It was not empty,” Cas says, stiffly.

Dean pulls himself out from under the car and he gives the angel a disbelieving look. “Dude. I was _in_ the car.”

“There was a turtle.”

From the corner of the garage, there’s a low noise, like a cough, and Dean scowls. There had been a turtle.

A large. Slow. Fucking. Turtle.

“Cas,”

“I couldn’t hit the turtle, Dean,” the angel says, stubbornly. Glaring at an oil stain on the ground.

“Of course you couldn’t,” Dean mutters, pulling himself back under the car.

Not like he can really be mad. He hasn’t been able to get mad and stay mad since he found himself in the bunker, hitting his knees and sobbing as his brother and the angel stared in shock and his mother bent over him.

His fucking _mother._

Sam had spent almost a week refusing to trust her. Refusing to trust that it was real, because demons lie, and angels lie, and if the underlings are taking their cues from the bosses, then Amara’s parting gift came with vicious hooks.

Except time slid by and Mary watched with these big eyes, waiting for Sam to drift into her orbit. Even Cas trusted her, and Cas--well, Cas had a shitty record for trusting people, but if the angel was willing to give her a chance, how could Sam refuse?

And then Dean threw him into his bedroom wall, and shouted that he was hurting Mom’s feelings, and to get the fuck over it, and even in the anger, Sam could hear the desperate fear in his brother.

Sam backed down.

Of course Sam backed down.

He had sent Dean off to _die_ and every fucking day felt like a gift, still. So if Dean wanted him to play nice with the creature wearing their mother’s face, well, he could get on board with that.

Just meant he’d be there, when she turned feral, like they _always_ did.

But she didn’t.

And as the summer wound out and the weeks slid by, and Heaven pieced itself back together--they relaxed.

Sam and Dean and Cas. They took a breath. They slept too late, and drank too much--though not as much as they had during the worst days of the apocalypse or when Dean had first come back from purgatory--and they...breathed.

Dean was braced for Castiel to leave. That was the angel’s MO, after all. They fought side by side during the worst of it, and they hurt each other, broke each other open on the sharp edges of their friendship and twisted version of family.

But.

He didn’t.

“Heaven—it’s a mess, Dean,” he confessed, a week or so after God and Amara hightailed it for parts unknown. “Everyone is wondering what to do, now that God is actually _gone._ ”

“You should be there,” Dean says, the words sticking even as he forced them out.

Cas stares at his beer for a long stretch, until Dean feels a fission of nerves. “You called me brother,” he says, quietly. Blue eyes flick up, searching and hopeful. “Do you still believe that?”

“Of course,” Dean says, without hesitation. “You will always be our brother, Cas.”

“Then I would like to stay.” Cas doesn’t look at him as he says it, and Dean can feel Sam, drifting through the door with fresh beers for each of them, and he catches his brother’s eye. Sam looks about two seconds from breaking into tears, because he’s a big fucking girl like that, but he’s smiling, through the mess of emotion.

“Heaven will do what it always does. They’ll fight and they’ll eventually settle under a strong angel, and everyone will follow orders that mean very little. We have no father and his archangels are either broken, dead, or missing. They have no guidance, and if time has taught me anything, it’s that mine is not what Heaven needs.”

There was very little either Winchester could say to argue with that, so Dean just nods dumbly and says, “Ok, man. Yeah. You can stay. Of course you can stay.”

And Cas smiles, and it’s that easy.

The end of days has apparently pushed all of them out of their stubborn refusal to talk to each other and ask for what they need. Castiel would never had dared ask for this, when the angels fell. But Dean called him _brother_ and that is the highest honor Dean can give.

Good things can come of barely averted disasters. Good to know.

So Castiel lives in the bunker, and Sam watches Mary, and Dean exists in the best mood he’s been in since the apocalypse.

The first one.

“Cas. Do me a favor. If you want to fix this POS, avoid all the fucking turtles in the world,” Dean says now, his voice muffled by the car he’s buried under. “As long as I’m responsible for keeping her running, stay on the damn road.”

“I can take it to an automotive shop,” Castiel says, stiffly.

From his corner of the garage, Sam actually laughs, a loud snort of amusement before he ducks back behind his computer, doing his best impression of the vanishing man. Dean, whose reappeared from under the Continental, throws his brother a dirty look.

It’s almost ridiculous, watching an overgrown Sasquatch trying to hide behind a eleven inch screen.

“No one else is fucking touching your car, are you crazy?” Dean snaps, offended. Cas looks down.

“I apologize.”

“Hey, guys,” Sam says.

“Don’t apologize, dude. Just don’t dodge _turtles._ ”

“Guys,” Sam tries again.

“I will—do my best,” Cas says stiffly.

“ _Guys!”_

 _“What?”_ they snap in unison.

It’s vaguely intimidating, being on the receiving end of a grumpy angel and a pissed off hunter. Sam, after years of exposure, doesn’t look intimidated. If anything, he looks annoyed.

Then he says the thing that all of them knew was coming.

Six weeks was a good fucking run, and Dean knows, watching Sam shift in his little folding chair, his hair falling shaggy in his eyes, that it’s ending. He has a heartbeat, to hope they all come home, from whatever is coming next.

Because with the Winchesters’, there is always a _next._

“I found a case.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm going to DestielCon, so you get this chapter a little early. <3 We're diverging from S12 at this point. What do you think?? <3


	3. Chapter 3: Families & Monsters

 

They convene in the kitchen, where Mary is making lunch. It’s simple today, sandwiches for Dean and Cas, and a salad for Sam. She smiles as Dean brushes a kiss over her hair on his way to the sink, and Cas murmurs a soft hello before he slides into a seat next to Sam at the table.

Sam is already behind his computer, reading again. Mary drops the salad next to him and a tray of cut vegetables in the middle of the table, giving Dean a pointed stare.

Apparently being dead for the better part of three decades isn’t enough to make the mom-look quit it working.

“So in Colorado. There’s been six hikers to go missing in the past year. Two this past month.”

Dean frowns, his mouth full. He says something around the food, and Sam gives him a disgusted look.

“Chew, swallow, talk,” Mary says mildly.

“Is it a wendigo?” Cas asks, and Dean grunts, nodding at the angel. Cas pulls a tiny bite off the sandwich, pressing it between his thumb and forefinger before he nibbles at it, an expression of distaste and longing sliding over his features.

“Maybe. It makes sense. The killings are happening in the fall and spring, and there was an avalanche up there back in the 1800s.”

Dean makes a face. “A trapper got trapped?”

Sam shrugs. “Usually how it goes.”

“Baby is ready. We can be on the road in an hour,” Dean says, and Sam exchanges a quick look with Cas.

But it’s Mary who speaks up. “You aren’t going.”

Cas make a low, startled noise, and ducks lower to the table. If his wings were visible, Sam is pretty sure they’d be forming a protective shield around him.

Mary is leaning against the fridge, and she’s glaring at them.

She’s adapted surprisingly well to this new world she’s been thrust into. But she _hasn’t_ adjusted to the fact that the four-year-old and infant she had been raising are grown men who have been hunting longer than she’d been alive.

That heaven and hell knew their names, and feared them.

“Um,” Dean says, brilliant as always.

“A wendigo? Are you insane? Those are way too dangerous.”

“We’ve killed them before, mom. We know what we’re doing.” Sam says.

Dean nudges him, “Remember when you came back from Stanford?”

Mary frowned, and a kind of lost expression settles over her face. The brothers are watching each other, lost in memories, and neither see it.

Castiel does.

“I don’t like it,” she says, but it’s weaker now. Like she knows she has no leg to stand on. That this was decided before the boys ever entered the kitchen.

It was.

“Get your shit, Sam. We’ll roll out in thirty. Mom, you good?” Dean asks, and for the first time, he and Sam hesitate.

They haven’t been on a case since the world didn’t end.

They haven’t left Mary alone.

She smiles, and if it’s tense around the edges, well. They haven’t had long enough to figure that out about each other. They don’t know she’s nervous because they don’t know _her._

“You’ll be back when it’s done?”

Dean grins. “Yeah. Four days. Maybe a week. Tops.”

Sam kisses her cheek as Dean leaves the kitchen. “Don’t worry, Mom. This will be easy. A milk run.”

And because he’s never done that before. She doesn’t argue. She just touches where his lips were, and swallows the fears that are choking her as the two men who are her sons exit, intent on doing what they do best.

“They are very good, at what they do, Mary,” Castiel says. He lingers near his uneaten sandwich and she looks at him.

“It’s a monster, and my babies are running out to find it.”

He nods, accepting that.

Accepting her fear.

“I’ll bring them home, safe.” He says, a solemn promise and for some reason, that settles her nerves. He sees the gratitude in her eyes, the relief, before she turns away.

Cas leaves as Dean shouts for him, and doesn’t tell her that it’s because he used to promise the same thing, every time she asked him to keep them safe, when he visited her heaven and told her about the boys she died to protect.

Sam and Dean don’t know that Castiel used to visit her heaven.

Mary doesn’t remember being dead, much less the years she spent in heaven.

They all exist in this strange place, family who are still strangers, a new closeness that is strange and delicate and fragile.

And it’s killing Castiel to watch.

Castiel finds Dean in his room and green eyes flick up and over him as he packs his favorite knife and guns. It's familiar and comforting in its familiarity.

“How long will it take to get there?”

“About twelve hours,” Dean’s gaze narrows. “You aren't coming.”

“Of course I'm coming,” Cas says, almost annoyed. “But I thought I'd let you and Sam have some time together while you drive. I need to check in on Heaven.”

Dean frowns but he doesn't object. Cas huffs. “I will be back before you need me.”

“Be careful, yeah? I don't trust those winged dicks.”

“They're not dangerous,” Cas objects. “They're merely scared.”

“They were scared when Metatron stranded them down here and that made them even more dangerous,” Dean observes and hefts his bag, a familiar, comfortable weigh on his shoulder.

“I will be careful,” Cas says eventually and Dean nods.

When he looks back over, the angel is gone.

 

* * *

 

It's comfortable to be back on the road, in the familiar space of the Impala. Neither mentions it, but more of Sam's tension drops away the longer they drive, rolling away like the miles under Baby’s wheels. “Cas gonna meet us?” he asks and Dean grunts, shoving an AC/DC into the tape deck.

“I don't like him going to Heaven. It don't feel right, letting him go into danger alone.”

“He isn't exactly defenseless,” Sam objects.

Dean shrugs. “I know that. Doesn't mean I like it. Don't much like letting you walk into a fight without backup either.”

Sam doesn't respond to that. It's not the first time Dean’s compared Cas to Sam, and while it's beginning to be less jarring, Sam doesn't think he'll ever get used to it, not completely.

“What do we know about this miner?” Dean says, changing the subject before Sam can force him to talk about Cas and this new layer to their relationship.

 

* * *

 

The miner is exactly what they'd expect from a Wendigo. He got trapped with some others up in the mountains during a particular rough winter. An avalanche kept them pinned down for two months, during the deepest part of the winter.

The rest of the story wasn't too hard to figure out. All the requisite gore and hunger that kept the miner alive and _different._

Humans who turn to cannibalism to survive. Wendigos are nasty sons of bitches, and they give Dean the willies, even now. They have ever since he got attacked by one so many years ago.

He's gotten pretty good at ignoring that fear, and he does it now as he and Sam unload their gear and start hiking. The plan is pretty simple. Hike into the middle of nowhere, where the last vics were last seen, set up camp and dangle themselves like bait.

It it weren’t for the flesh eating monster in the woods, it could almost be a vacation.

Dean texts Cas their coordinates before the Winchesters leave the Impala parked in the dirt lot on the edge of the virgin forest and head up into the wilderness to kill a monster.

It’s comfortable, being together. Hunting together. Sam has been on edge, even as they relaxed, and neither are good at down time. Lisa taught Dean he doesn’t do apple pie normal well.

Not that living in a secret bunker under an abandoned power station is exactly _normal._

“We should go camping with Mom,” Dean says, after maybe an hour of hiking. Sam, a few steps behind him, grunts in acknowledgement, but Dean can hear the hint of dismissal.

“She’s not goin’ anywhere, Sam. She’s not a trap. When you gonna accept that?”

“Remember when Death raised the dead, back during the apocalypse? And Bobby got Karen back?”

Dean frowns. Because of course he remembers. It was hard to forget when the dead come back to life.

Especially when the dead is your surrogate father’s wife, and you’re the one who has to put her down.

“I remember she made a fucking awesome pie.”

Sam makes a face at him. Even with his back to his brother, Dean can _feel_ the bitchface he’s getting, and he huffs a sigh. “Dude, this isn’t Death, this is Karen, and Mom isn’t gonna go zombie monster on us. She’s _back.”_

“You’ll forgive me if I continue to withhold judgment on that,” Sam says stiffly.

“How long?” Dean asks, pausing to catch his breath. The trail is steep and as much as he hates to admit it, he isn’t as young as he used to be.

“I dunno, man. Until I stop getting the willies every damn time she walks in the room.”

They walk in silence, and then Sam says, his voice low. “You taught me trust my instincts, Dean. I’m doing that. Don’t get pissed that I’m doing what you taught me to do.”

And that effectively ends the conversation. They traipse on, deeper into the woods as the shadows length and the sun begins to set.

When the finally reach the little mountain lake that the latest disappearing camper vanished from, neither brother is surprised to see the angel sitting on a fallen tree, hair ruffled and blue eyes worried.

 

 

 


	4. Chapter 4. Heavenly Families & Lost Brothers

Chapter 4 Salt & Burn

The thing about hunting Wendigos is that there isn't much to do.

Castiel is quiet, not wanting to talk about whatever happened in Heaven and both brothers allow him a little space, working in comfortable silence to get their camp site set up. Sam rigs up some cameras to light up the clearing if anything slips in. Dean starts a low fire.

“Tomorrow, we’ll look around. If there's a Wendigo, there's a cave where the thing eats. We find it, we don't need to wait for him to come to us.”

Sam nods.

“There is a system of caves about a mile up the mountain,” Cas says, the first thing he's said in hours.

Dean slides a look at Sam and then shrugs. “Do you want to look now?”

Cas makes a low noise of dissent in his throat and they glance over at him. “It’d be dangerous,” he says, almost lamely.

“This whole hunt is dangerous,” Sam says slowly.

“We should wait for morning,” Castiel says instead of addressing that rather obvious statement.

“Any particular reason, buddy?” Dean asks.

He flushes, and rubs his neck. “I promised Mary I’d keep you out of most danger,” he mutters at the ground and the boys go still and silent.

Watching him. And weighing those words. Sam looks at Dean, waiting. Because in the end, it will be Dean who decides. That’s been the truth of their partnership since Sam was a preteen with a shotgun, trailing Dean and his father into the bowls of a haunted house.

“We can wait til morning,” Dean says, shrugging.

Sam blinks at his brother, a little startled. But he doesn’t argue. And some of the tension eases out of Cas. Neither brother misses that.

 

Sam is sleeping and the fire has dulled down to a small flickering flame when Dean finally nudges Cas with the toe of one boot. “You gonna tell me?”

Castiel shrugs, a distinctly human gesture by a creature that will never be human.

Even when he was, Cas didn’t human well.

“Is it that bad?” Dean asks, quietly.

“No worse than expected,” Cas admits.

Which could mean anything. Castiel has seen Heaven at its very best and it’s utter worst—hell, he dragged it there, half the time.

“There are two leaders emerging. Lauriel. And Constantine.”

“Like the comic?” Dean grins, and Castiel gives him a blank look. The one that Dean has come to associate with _this human will never not be an idiot._

“Neither sound bad,” Dean adds, quickly.

“Compared to what we’ve seen in the last few years, they aren’t,” Cas says, but he’s still frowning. Staring at the flames like they’ll yield some kind of answers to whatever the hell is bothering him.

Dean has learned that sometimes the angel just needs time. Needs to sort through whatever is going on in that strange messy head of his, and then speak.

So he drinks his beer and watches the darkness and waits in quiet silence.

It takes another ten minutes. “When they left, they left a hole.”

“What kind of hole are we talking about?” Dean asks, thinking back to when Chuck had explained how bad it would be if he died and Amara lived—how it would unmake the universe.

“The kind that needs to be filled.” Castiel says, grimly. “Some of the old gods are waking.”

Dean goes very still at that, and when he turns to Cas, all of the ease and joy has drained away, like the last six weeks never happened.

“What the hell does that mean?” he asks, his voice low.

“We don’t know. Lauriel is watching it. So far, four Norse deities have woken, ten from the Hindu pantheon, and six from the Greek pantheon. One from the Egyptian—we haven’t tracked any more than that, but the theory is more will continue to wake until the vacuum is filled. They seem to be waking in pairs—one dark, and one light.”

“The Egyptians only had one,” Dean says.

“Isis, yes. But Orisis is already showing signs. They think it will be a few days. Maybe a week.”

He bites his lip, “The Norse are the only ones who didn’t follow that pattern. They have only one dark god woken.”

“Loki?” Dean asks, soft and grief flutters across Cas’s face, so quickly if he wasn’t watching for it, Dean would have missed it. He shakes his head, and Dean squeezes his shoulder. “There’s still hope.”

“Chuck didn’t say it was impossible,” Castiel says, softly. “Only that it would take time.”

He falls silent.

He had spent eons in Heaven, serving and being reprogramed, the dutiful solider and brilliant tactician. Trying to be a good angel. But he had never quite succeeded. He’d never been what upper management wanted in an angel.

Maybe that is why he feels so close to the dead archangel.

Cas doesn't talk about Gabe much. He did, right after Gabriel died, back during the apocalypse that didn't happen. He got drunk and broke down one night and Dean had sat next to him, nor sure what to do or how to make it better.

He didn't understand why Cas was so broken up over an archangel who vanished from Heaven thousands of years ago.

He still doesn't. Aside from silent tears and a drunken binge, Castiel never spoke of Gabe.

“You think it's odd for me to still hope.” Cas says, into the silence of the fire.

Dean glances at him. “I think there's a lot about Gabriel you never told me.”

“You taught me to be human,” Cas says, so unexpected that Dean pauses in the middle of sipping his beer. “Gabriel taught me to be an angel.”

Oh.

_Oh._

“Our father gave us--the younger angels--to the older siblings in our family. Gabriel--he was an archangel and he shouldn't have gotten involved in my training. But he did. He took me from Uriel and trained me. Said it was a joke. Except it wasn’t. Maybe it was at first, but then he got serious. He…he taught me everything. How to fight. How to think.” Cas looks at Dean, “He taught me to question. That it wasn’t _bad_ , to question.”

Dean sucks in a breath and Cas’s lips tighten. “I forgot, so much of this. Naomi took so much of it, with her needles and reprogramming. I didn’t _know_ who he was. What he’d done for me. And then, when I did remember he was gone. Metatron used him—and that made me remember everything that Gabe did for me. It was like losing him all over again.”

Dean leans forward, into Cas’s line of vision, until the angel looks at him. “Why didn’t you say something, man?”

“Because you hated him, Dean. What was there to say?”

“I hate some of the things he did. But he was your family. I couldn’t really hate him.”

Cas smiles, a little exasperated. “You’ve made a habit of hating my family since the moment you met Uriel.”

The hunter’s mouth opens, and then closes. Opens again, and then he curses. “Fuck. Yeah. That’s a good point.”

“It’s ok, Dean. I understand why you weren’t fond of Gabe. At the time, I wasn’t either. But. He wasn’t as bad as he wanted us to believe he was. He cared.” His gaze drifts, out. Into the darkness. “He was the first creature to show me what love was, and to show me that loving humanity was a good thing. Even Naomi couldn’t erase that. I think that’s why I fell, after I pulled you from Hell. You and Sam brought it all back. Every good thing Gabe taught me.”

“Do you think he’ll come back,” Dean asks, softly.

Castiel sighs, and the noise is like a light breeze. It’s not his huffy petulance, or his exhausted, tired of humans. This one is soft, but sweet. Calm. Like he’s happy, and at peace.

It’s not a noise Dean has heard often from his friend and it makes him almost ridiculously happy to hear now. After all the years they’ve spent fighting to save the world, fighting each other, they deserve this.

Cas deserves to be happy.

“I think that after endless years, God came back. I think that we watched him reconcile with his son, and his sister. A year ago I would have said that all of those thing were impossible. A year ago, I would have said that Mary being in the bunker and us being happy was impossible. I would have said that removing the Mark was impossible.” Castiel turns and looks at him, and something flickers in his eyes. A tiny smile tips up his lips. “This has been a year for the impossible. It gives me hope for…” He trails off, and then shrugs. His smile widens, “My brother returning would not surprise me in the least, at this point.”

Dean stretches his legs out and the fire pops, warm and comfortable between them. “It has been a banner year for shit that shouldn’t happen.”

Castiel laughs, a low, almost silent noise.

“They’re worried about Lucifer,” Castiel says and Dean tenses.

They haven’t talked much about the archangel that Amara ripped from Cas so violently.

They’ve talked even less about the time when Cas played host to the Morningstar. Dean hasn’t wanted to. Hasn’t wanted to think about the danger that is Lucifer roaming creation unchecked.

“Do you think he survived Amara?” Dean asked.

Cas looks a little sad. “Yes. We would have felt it. Every angel would feel the death of a Firstborn.”

Dean’s silent, and then, “How bad is it, that Lucifer is wandering the earth without a vessel?”

Castiel sighs, and stares up at the stars. His eyes very distant. It’s at moments like these, that Dean can’t forget what Castiel is.

What he has been.

He’s been a solider and a watcher, through more years than Dean can even fathom. He’s seen humanity before it was walking upright.

He’s been a god and he has fallen, and he has been the leader of a heaven’s armies. When he’s sitting in his corner of the couch in the bunker, it’s easy to think of him as Cas, their friend and ally, the brother neither had ever expected. The nebulous _maybe_ Dean can barely put a name to.

But when he’s like this, remote and watchful and weary—then Dean can’t forget everything else.

It scares him.

Not that he’d ever admit that, but the angel leaving them again terrifies Dean.

He doesn’t get to keep people. Not the ones he loves. Time has shown him that. Even Sam he’s fought like hell to keep and he’s lost him, more often than Dean really wants to consider.

He— _they_ —almost lost him again, when Cas played host to Lucifer. That loss is too fresh, too painful for Dean to linger on, and this question pushes it to the painful surface.

So he nudges Castiel’s knee with his own, and says gruffly, “We’ll find him, man. We’ll take care of heaven and the old gods, and Lucifer. All of it.”

Worry flickers in his eyes and Dean smiles at him. “We’ve done it before, haven’t we?”

A smile. Familiar and fond and sweet twists up Cas’s lips and he nods. Staring at the hunter like he’s forgotten the stars had ever held his attention. “Yes. I suppose we have.”

And even though there is a monster in the woods and Dean should sleep. Even though a new threat is already rising—and seriously, six _weeks_ isn’t nearly long enough between apocalypses. Even though there is the tension between his brother and Mary, and all the other things that plague him—for this moment, sitting by the angel’s side with the fire a dim light between them, and the stars bright and clear and ignored above them, Dean Winchester is happy.

Peaceful.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What do you think? It's been all sweet and sugar up until now, but the stage is set...which means everything's about to take a nosedive.


	5. Blue Goddesses & Bad Dogs

The city is tiny. That’s why we chose it. Fens rumbles under his breath as I check into a little hotel room, and the guy at the desk leers at me as I keep his leash tight and wrapped around my fingers.

It amuses me that Fens will let me walk him on a leash. Once, I walked the length of the shore, and the sky soared above me and souls trembled as my brother bayed at the moon and Odin sat sulky in his great hall.

Our grandfather had never tolerated Fens. Probably why he hated me—I made no secret that Fenrir was my favorite.

“You get lonely, I get off at eight.”

I pop my gum and hook my hair behind one ear as Fenrir growls, a low rumbling thing that makes the guy behind the counter skitter back a step.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” I say dryly, and Fenrir huffs in annoyance as I scoop up the key and saunter away from the desk.

In our room, I climb into the shower, fascinated by the way the water runs blue, the dye from my hair still fading and running. It colors my skin in little rivulets the way blood once did. I sway a little, side to side under the hot water—the hotel has the worst water pressure—and smile a little at the trails of blue.

Fens bangs on the door and shouts my name. “Let’s _go_ , Hel!”

Right. Because tonight is not about standing naked in the shower and remembering the feeling of power and blood.

It’s about recreating it.

It’s been almost a month since I woke in that deserted forest with my brother at my side. A month and my power—and his—is still almost laughably weak.

We can feel them. The other gods who are waking. Every day, I can feel another twitching in their sleep, reaching for the world that is new and different.

A world that has forgotten them.

Forgotten _us._

Oh, not all of us. Some are still spoken of, whispered in secret places.

And then some are shouted from the very fucking rooftops.

Who the hell would ever have thought _Thor_ would persist as long as he had? Although, I’ve seen pictures. What this ridiculous world has put up on the throne and called the Thunder God.

Fenrir howled with laughter, when he saw that. I had grinned—the man with long blonde hair and muscles so big they seemed deformed _was_ very pretty.

But he was not my uncle.

My uncle was dark and broody and bearded, and his muscles were sleek and strong and rippled when he walked. He was strong and sometimes terrifying and he fought like cats and dogs with Father. But he was not…. _that._

Dressed in frayed black jeans and a tight black top, I step out of the bathroom. Fens gives me a quick once over, and his smile is wolfish, even as his eyes are hard.

My brother still doesn’t like that I’ve grown up.

“Ready?” I ask, flicking my blue curls over one shoulder. My fingers drum, an anxious beat against my thigh and Fens reaches for me.

Laces our fingers together and tugs me close. I lean into him as we leave the hotel behind. Rage is still a thing, flickering in my veins, and I want to scream my fury at the sky. It’s been almost two months since I woke up in that forest. And Father is still not here.

For the first month, we’d been too weak to do anything but hide. Fens could feel others in our family, rising in the east, and that more than anything pushed us west.

But there was also this.

Our father was a god. A trickster, ancient and powerful. And his death spread like violent ripples. Most wouldn’t feel them. Even I can’t feel them and death calls to me like a moth to the flame.

But Fenrir. He is a wolf, at the core. If death is my life’s blood, killing is his, and hunting.

For a month, we stayed in our little cabin in the corner of the woods, undisturbed, and I let my brother take care of me. I let him curl, all shaggy black wolf, at my feet in the night, and lope at my side when I walked, gathering the souls of the dead forest animals. I let him tease me and cook for me and make sharp, biting little comments as I tried to use my power and failed, over and over.

I let him become my brother again.

Something I had missed, and fell into as easily as breathing.

But by the time the month was over, I was ready to claw his eyes out or drag his soul free from his damn wolf form, just to get a break.

And from the way he slunk around our little cabin in wolf form and nipped at my heels and snarled at me when I stepped on his tail, he wasn’t far behind me.

It was the twenty third day in the cabin that I sat staring at the fire, curled up around my knees, and blank as Fens dozed on the bed.

“I miss Father,” I say, softly. A whispered confession that draws Fens up on the bed. He gives me a searching look and I sighed, twisting the edge of the blanket between my fingers. I can feel Fens shifting off the bed, and when he presses against me, it’s as my brother, and not the wolf. His hair still smells like the wolf—wild, with the faintest hint of decay and blood.

“I can feel him,” he says at last, and my head jerks up. I stare at him, and he offers me a tight lipped smile, his teeth tucked behind his lips. “Not him. When I found you—it’s because I could feel you waking. Your power was like a beacon, and I couldn’t resist it.” I lean back, into his steady presence and he sighs into my hair, his lips a quick press before he continues.

“But I felt him. Father left echoes. They’re faint, but I can _feel_ his death.”

Something like grief swims in my veins, and I stare at him, with big, furious eyes. “Can you feel who killed him?”

Because that is what really matters.

How we can avenge him.

My brother stares at me, and smiles. And I see my own wildness and fury in his eyes.

His hands, velvet soft and deadly sharp, wrap around my wrist, pulls me out of my memories. He watches me with big eyes, waiting.

Around me, I can feel the long still echoes of my father, of his power pulsing like a phantom heartbeat.

Souls that he touched, that he fucked with, before he left. I smile at my brother.

“Let’s go hunting,” I murmur.

 

 


	6. Mother Mary & Brothers Bound

The problem was that Sam didn’t trust her.

It wasn’t that he didn’t like her. She could understand that. He didn’t know her. But Sam liked _everyone._ It was really only a matter of time before he weakened and did something that let him worm her way into his heart.

She could wait for that. Easy enough. Sam was standoffish even as a baby. He only ever really calmed when Dean was nearby.

Dean—he was her little sweetheart, the one who threw himself heart first into every damn thing. Even while he teased Sam about being a bleeding heart and prone to talk about his feelings, her oldest son was there, loving everyone around him. Taking care of them as much as they’d allow and sneaking behind their backs to do the shit they wouldn’t.

Even with the angel—and she still wasn’t quite sure what to make of _that_.

No, the problem wasn’t that Sam didn’t like her. It’s that he didn’t _trust_ her.

But more than that—he didn’t trust her with Dean.

Mary had been back from the dead—something she was trying very hard to not think about—for six weeks. And the thing she’d learned about the sons she left behind, and the angel who stood at their side was that they were utterly, completely, unhealthily devoted to each other.

Sam had taken one look at her, and shouted Dean’s name, ripping her away from him. Shocked and reeling, with no clue where she was or when, she found herself pinned to the wall, a gun trained on her by a man she’d never recognize as her son, and another man wielding a long silver blade as he braced himself in front of Dean.

_Shielding_ Dean.

“I’m not going to hurt him,” she gasped.

“Shut the hell up,” Sam snarled.

“Are you ok?” the other man was saying, his voice a low rumble of concern and Dean was sobbing, but fighting to his feet, pushing the other man aside.

He maked a noise of protest, clutching at Dean as Dean scrambled to his brother’s side. “Sam, _stop_.”

“It’s not her,” Sam snapped.

_“Stop,”_ Dean said again, and that time, it wasn’t a plea.

It was an order. The kind of order Mary had heard her whole life, the kind that her father snapped out and her husband gave when he was drunk and not thinking.

Her eyes widened and she stared at them, these men who were her babies and the stranger. The men who still looked like they want to kill her, and the son who was looking at her like he wanted to cry and hug her and maybe throw up a little.

And she knew why they are familiar.

They shouldn’t be. It’s been thirty years and more, Sam is a _man_ now, and she shouldn’t know them. She shouldn’t _recognize_ them.

But she did. Even on that black topped road, when Dean stumbled out of the trees, before he breathed out the word that shattered her already reeling mind.

She recognized _what_ he was, even if she didn’t recognize _who._

_“You’re hunters,”_ she whispers, and grief cracks her down the middle.

 

That was six weeks ago and she's spent most of that time processing. Trying to wrap her head around--fuck, _everything_.

Her sons were the Winchesters. Hunters and Men of Letters and fucking friends with angels.

(Still not ready to tackle that.)

The first week, she'd buried herself in sleep and refused to think about the fact that John was dead, or that she had missed most of the boys’ life.

That they were older now than she had been when she died.

The second week, she forced herself out of bed and into the kitchen. She baked for days, piles of cookies and pie after pie after pie, the same damn apple pie for two days before Sam intervened and showed her a website (oh and let's just take a minute to discuss _technology_ ) that was so full of recipes she could bake a new pie every day for years and still never make the same thing twice.

Everyone was happier with a little variety and Dean had a perpetual smile on his face as he ate his way through pecan and peach and blackberry and salted caramel chestnut and chocolate hazelnut banana.

Castiel found her in the middle of the night, the third week, in the library, sitting in front of a case file that Sam had put together from their last case.

She didn't realize she was crying until Castiel touched her shoulder and said, softly and concerned, “Mary?”

She sniffles and looked at him and her expression turns fierce, the kind of determination that the angel has come to expect and dread.

That, then, is where Dean gets it from.

“They won't tell me what happened to them.” she said.

“Dean wants to spare you the painful details.” Cas says gently.

“I'm their _mother_. It's my job to spare them,” she almost snarls.

For a long time, Castiel stares at her. That deep, see into the soul searching stare that she's seen between him and Dean so often.

But different because she's pretty sure that Castiel doesn't want to fuck her and when he looks at Dean like this she sometimes just wants to bolt so she doesn't have to witness the angel throwing her son into the nearest hard surface and kissing him senseless.

Not that _that_ has happened. _Yet._

Finally he sighs, this grumpy little huff of noise that makes a tiny smile twitch her lips up and nods.

“Fine.”

He closes his eyes. “When I first met Dean, he was in Hell…”

It took the better part of a week, meeting every night in the library, for the angel to tell her everything.

About their childhood and John’s blind search for revenge.

About Sam leaving them and Dean’s self-loathing.

About those lonely years when none of them could find their way back to each other.

About hell. The seals. Ruby and the demon blood. Lucifer and her sons’ role in the coming apocalypse.

Stopping it and the sacrifice that took. Everything that came after.

Even his own betrayal of the boys and his bloody time as god. Castiel refused to look at her while he told her that, but he told her.

He told her everything.

When he was done, slumped exhausted across from her, Mary was sure of three things:

John Winchester had a fuck ton to explain for raising her sons like this.

Her sons were heroes. The very best men she could imagine.

And Castiel loved them.

That. That might have been the hardest thing to accept.

That a fucking _angel_ chose to leave heaven for her sons, that he had died for them. She wasn't ready to express what was between Castiel and Dean, but she knew devotion when she saw it and it was a living thing between the three men, a live wire of trust and love that bound them together so tightly she couldn’t separate them.

She didn’t even want to try.

But Sam didn't trust her. He was content to let the angel and his brother fawn over her and he wasn't rude--not after Dean knocked some sense into him--but he was...reserved.

It bothered her. She wanted her sons to trust and love her, wanted to make up all the years they left. And she wasn't stupid enough to think it would be easy. But she couldn't help but wish that Sam would bend, just a little.

 

That thought is echoing in her mind as she twitches the case files into a neat little pile and straightens the stacks of books Sam left on the table in the library.

He was like her mother. Dean had all of Mary’s impulsive impatience. But Sam. Sam was slow and steady, and _smart_.

He liked being buried in research and lore, and that reminded her of her mother.

They came back from the Wendigo hunt a few days ago. Dean had stumbled in, kissed her cheek and collapsed in his room for seventeen hours. Sam did much similar--only the angel didn’t seem to need to sleep for days. He gave her a small smile, and then disappeared into Dean’s room. She could hear the soft murmur of the TV, and when she peeked in around hour eight of the sleep jag, she saw Dean, passed out in the bed near the edge, his entire body curled toward the angel sitting next to him. Cas isn’t watching him, but there’s something--different.

He’s shed his trench coat and suit coat, both tossed in a rumple at the foot of Dean’s bed with Cas’s tie, and his shoes are toed off, and set in a neat line near the wall next to Dean’s boots. Cas has his head propped up with one hand, elbow resting on the arm of the chair, slouched and comfortable and completely ignoring the sleeping hunter.

Except that he is entire body is leaning toward Dean, even the way his head tips.

They are like magnets being pulled toward each other.

She thinks again, of that moment, when she blinked into the bunker, and the way that Cas had appeared in those first few heartbeats.

Now she knows he’s a sweetheart. More awkward and confused than anything. But in that handful of heartbeats, before Dean fought free and threw himself between her and Sam, she had seen what he is. Really.

And it’s terrifying.

She shifts, and his eyes dart to her, tension filling his entire body, and it’s there again.

Her mother called it deep waters, once.

Deep waters hide so much. And Cas—well. He’s an ocean. He is soft smiles and earnest sincerity, but beneath the surface, there is something feral and deadly and all of it is poised to protect Dean.

She likes the angel who has made his home with the Winchesters.

But she kinda hopes she won’t ever have occasion to meet another angel.

 

 

The boys are in the library, working on the never ending task of archiving and cataloguing the Men of Archives records. Mary is helping as much as they will let her, which mostly means standing by the table and handing Dean stacks of books when Cas and Sam finish with them, waiting patiently for them to need her.

The knock on the door of the bunker is almost violent in it’s volume, and it jerks all of them to stillness.

All three of them remember the last time someone knocked on that door, when Billie strolled in all sass and smirks and the power to help them all.

Dean reaches for his gun and Castiel’s hand grasps his angel blade, flipping the weight easily. They move toward the door, entrance of the of the bunker.

Sam, surprises Mary.

He tugs her by the arm to a halt and slides in front of her, slightly defensive.

And even though she knows it’s what he’d do for anyone—it’s what Sam does, protecting others, it still sets off a smile and a low ache in her gut, because she wants him to _care_.

She wants his actions to be because he needs her safe, and not an instinctive response to a perceived threat.

The door opens and Castiel speaks, his voice a sharp question. “Lireal? What—why are you here?”

Sam huffs and mutters, “Fucking angels.”

Mary digs an elbow in his side. “Language, Sam.” Before she nudges past him and into entrance of the bunker.

A small woman is standing on the platform, the art deco railing coming to the middle of her chest. She’s slender and lovely, with impossibly blue eyes, blonde hair swept into a neat pony tail, and black pencil skirt, a fitted suit jacket over her white button down and ruffled tie.

Even in heels, she barely reaches Castiel’s chin, and Mary smoothers a smile.

What she says, doesn’t make Mary smile.

That she is an angel, in their home, where her _sons_ are, does not make her smile. It makes Mary’s hand clench in fists and she wishes, desperately, for her own gun or knife.

“Castiel. We need your help.”

 

 


	7. Heaven's Call & Family Ties

“I don’t like it,” Dean growls.

Mary frowns but Sam just sighs. “We know. You’ve said. A few times. But Dean—“

“Dammit, Sam, he always gets dragged in there, and it always goes to hell. He doesn’t belong up there.”

“I know that.” Sam says quietly. “But he has to go.”

Dean stares at his brother for a long minute, and then turns away, cursing under his breath. For a second, Sam lets him and then, “What are you worried about?”

Dean shrugs. “The last time he went to Heaven when there was a power vacuum, he lied to us for a year and drove you insane, cracked Purgatory and then killed thousands of angels. The last time Heaven called him back for their own reasons, they ripped his mind apart and sent him back to kill us.”

“Dean,” Sam tries.

“The last time,” Dean says over him, “he went to _help_ the angels, he closed Heaven and accidentally set off another fucking civil war. So excuse me, Sammy, if I think he’s better here, with us, then up there. Because good as _Cas’s_ intentions might be, nothing in Heaven ever goes the way he wants it to.”

“Dean, he chose to go,” Mary says, sharply.

Sam tenses, and Dean goes still.

“You trust him,” she says, stepping forward, and glaring her oldest son down. Dean doesn’t even hesitate when he nods.

“Of course I fucking trust him,” he snaps.

“Good.” She sniffs. “Then trust him.”

Without waiting for him to respond, she turns on her heel and stalks out of the kitchen.

It’s easy, though, to _say_ trust.

And it’s not that he _doesn’t_.

It’s that it’s Castiel. The dude doesn’t have a good record with Heavenly Host.

And.

He doesn’t tell Sam this. Hell, he doesn’t even like _thinking_ it. It’s too close to feelings. But…

He’s used to Cas being _here._ After so many years when he wasn’t, when he was fighting to stay alive and Cas was doing the same, when they were fighting to save the fucking world. After all of it, they had peace.

Dean had never wanted the normal that Sam had. Maybe because he had it, for four years. Maybe because he _liked_ the life they lived.

Whatever. He didn’t feel the need to chase normal the way Sam did. And he had tried it.

There was that one god-forsaken year with Lisa, when Lis and Ben were the only good thing in a year so damn black he was surprised he came out the other side.

It was his only chance at normal apple pie and it hadn’t stuck.

And he made his peace with that.

He knew that this—hunting, Sam, even Castiel—was his life. The one he had chosen.

He was content with that, especially after all the shit with Amara, and that whole firewall thing.

But he had enjoyed this peace.

Had enjoyed waking up and not wondering if today was the day he’d die.

He enjoyed watching Cas shuffle into the kitchen and glaring at the world over a cup of coffee.

For an angel who didn’t need sleep, the little bastard _hated_ mornings.

He likes having his family close and that means Cas. Somehow, over the years and all the times they almost died, after all the betrayals and times they tore into each other, they're family.

He trusts Cas in a way he hasn't trusted anyone. The way he trusts Sam.

But different. Because when it's Sam who's gone, the ache in his chest doesn't make him unable to sleep, doesn't make him want to storm Heaven to drag him--ok, it does, but that's what you do for family.

He rubs a hand over his face. “Dammit, Cas, you better get your ass home soon,” he mutters.

 

Two days later, Cas is still not home, Dean has cleaned Baby twice and changed her oil, and he spent so long in the shooting range, Sam dragged him out while bitching about ammo supplies.

That's when Mary steps in.

The boys are in the kitchen, Sam disgustingly awake as Dean putters around making eggs and yawning around a cup of coffee that doesn't taste right without Cas to brew it right and glare at him.

Mary pops in while Dean is dumping eggs on a plate for Sam. He frowns at it, then puppy eyes Dean.

“Shit. Sorry.” Dean retreats to the fridge, then returns and sprinkles cheese over it and Sam grins into his plate as Dean crosses the kitchen to toss toast down at him.

Hassling Dean about what and how he cooks for him will never _not_ be amusing for Sam.

He looks up and catches Mary’s knowing glance and kinda grins. It's not the first warmth he's offered her, but it's still rare enough that her heart kinda jumps and she offers a tentative smile in response.

“Hungry, mom?” Dean asks and she seems to snap out of her daze.

“Yeah. And then you boys need to get your gear.”

That yanks their attention to her sharply. “Where we going?” Dean asks, carefully.

“We aren't going to wait for Cas while you go crazy. He'll be home when he can be. Until then, we’re going to find your aunt.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this is late, and this chapter is short. I'm sorry! I'm on deadline for a book I'm publishing and it put me behind here. Sorry sorry sorry!! Next week will be longer, and we're getting more answers about what the hell is happening.   
> And don't worry, the angel comes back soon. I like him too much to keep him away for long. <3


	8. Road Trips and Relatives

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know! This is so late. So so late. And it's short. But it's where I needed this to end, the next chapter is half written and Cas is back SOON! <3

Mary refuses to answer their questions. She listens to them yell for a bit, while the cheese melts into Sam's eggs and Dean's breakfast sandwich gets soggy, and she eats with methodical precision. Then she stands up and carries her plate to the sink and smiles at them.

“I have the keys and I'm leaving in thirty minutes. I suggest you be ready to go.” She stands and offers her sons a smile before she leaves them behind.

It's only when they're in Baby and about ten miles out from the Bunker that Dean finally says, “Your family isn't real fond of us, Mom. And there's that whole, we killed them thing.”

Mary kinda hums a note.

“Jenny is my Cas,” is all she says and it shuts them both up.

Because an old drunk once told them family don't end in blood and that has never been more true than when about them and Castiel.

Jenny is important to Mary. Important enough that despite thirty plus years of silence, Mary has no problem hunting her down and throwing her life in a tailspin.

“Mom grew up with a boy her parents saved. Named Davey. His daughter was my best friend, growing up. They were in the life, but she loved it. I wanted out and Jen never did. She only left because Uncle Davey left it all after my parents were killed."

She sits there, silent as Dean drives, and the miles slip away. There's so much that went wrong, because of that night. Because she made a deal to keep John. And even though she doesn't regret it, _can't_ regret it, because her boys are here. She still feels guilty.

"I'm sorry," she says, softly, thinking about her father. About everything he did, and how he hurt them. “For Dad. You boys—“

“Samuel’s actions aren’t on you, Mom. You gotta know we don’t blame you for that.”

“But if I hadn’t made that deal,” she murmurs, quietly.

“We’d still be here,” Sam says, and Dean throws him a quick, shocked look.

“This was always our destiny. A family of hunters, and the Men of Letters legacy? We never had a chance. Even if you hadn’t made a deal with Yellow Eyes, this is our life. This would have been our life.”

Dean inhales and Sam shrugs. “We’ve done alright, with what we were given.”

“It’s not fair.”

“Life isn’t,” Sam says, succinctly, and leans over, turning up the radio, and that’s it.

Conversation over.

 

It takes two days, and one awful hotel, to reach Jenny Forte’s home on the outskirts of Philadelphia.

Dean parks the Impala on the quiet, leafy street, and together the three Winchesters stare.

“It’s very…” Sam starts, and stops.

Dean is staring at it, a little bit harder than Sam expects, and there’s something in him that disturbs Sam.

Something like…longing…in his eyes.

“It looks like home,” Dean says. “Like apple pie and family.”

“It looks like she’s home,” Mary says, because she doesn’t know what that means.

She doesn’t know that apple pie life is the one thing they’ve never been able to have.

She has no idea how much Dean wants it.

Sam doesn’t move as Mary slides out of the Impala, fluffing her hair and smoothing her shirt with a nervous hand.

“You ok?”

Dean grunts. “Great. I’m great. I’m glad someone in this damn family got out.”

 _Even if we can’t._ There’s the unspoken words. The ones that don’t need to be spoken because Sam knows his brother better than he knows himself, and he knows what Dean is saying.

And what he’s not.

“C’mon, Sammy,” Dean says, flashing a smile that is almost—almost—not fake. “Let’s go see the family.”

Dean and Sam knock. Mary waits, out of sight, impatient as they tap on the door and wait.

The woman who answers is small. Almost a foot shorter than Dean, which leaves Sam looming over her. She’s got long grey hair threaded through with grey and wrinkles at her eyes that speak of smiles and laughter.

She looks like a grandmother, like if they scrape their feet, she might give them some cookies and milk.

Except her eyes.

Those are sharp and too knowing and they get a little bit colder, her smile going still when she sees them.

“I wondered if you’d ever show up on my doorstep.”

Dean smiles, “You know who we are?”

“I’m old and retired, Dean Winchester. I’ve never been stupid.”

“Jenny?”

She goes very pale, as Mary takes a step forward. Out of the shadows.

“Oh my god,” she whispers, swaying. Mary smiles, a shy thing. “How?” she asks, her voice shaking.

“God owed me a favor,” Dean says, flippant. Sam throws him a look, and Dean shrugs. “Well. His sister did.”

Jenny stares for a long moment, and then she gives herself a little shake. “Well, come in. We got a lot to catch up on.”


	9. Found Family & Dark Days

Sometimes when he wakes up, he can feel it. The subtle tension that says _today, things change._

Its something he quit questioning years ago, when John was still alive. It took longer to trust that instinct, though. But as Dean wakes up in a small bed that is almost painfully uncomfortable, in a room decorated  for a small child. Jenny had given him a little bashful smile as she escorted him to it, but he'd stayed in worse on a regular basis. So he wakes up and the first thing that occurs to him is the same thing that seems to occur to him every day lately.

Cas is still gone. He closes his eyes, and even though he feels strange about it, he prays.

_Castiel. I dunno where you are, man, or what they needed. I wish you'd check in. Lemme know your brothers didn't decide to take Chuck disappearing out on you. You gotta admit it's an angel move._

_Look, we're in Philly. Mom wanted to see a friend. She's something like an aunt? Who knew we had those still--thought all the Campbells went down during Samuel’s little bid to get Mom back. But we're here, and we'll be here a few days. If we catch a case, we might handle that but then we'll be back home. Just call when you're ready to come back, man. I miss you._

He blinks. He not used to admitting that. Not used to being that honest with Cas.

But he's tired. Fucking exhausted. Of hiding.

There is no warmth or acknowledgment or sign that his prayer was heard. There never is.

Dean just has to have faith. The thing Cas has been asking for since the first time they met.

He's not sure when he started. Maybe it was in Purgatory, when he clung to the belief he'd find the angel. Or after that, when faith that Cas would come through never wavered, even when logic insisted he was turning on them.

Or maybe it's simpler than that. Maybe it's that Cas leaves. God he leaves so fucking often. But he comes back. He never _leaves._

It's not the kind of absence that felt like losing a limb, when Sam left for Sanford, or when Dad went missing or Bobby died. Or when Cas died, brought down by Leviathan and Dean honestly just wanted to follow him into the black churned waves.

Which. That's as deep as he needs to get for a morning waking up in a room decorated in fucking pastels.

He shoves himself upright and wanders downstairs, in search of his brother, coffee and a bathroom.

Not in that order.

He finds two at the kitchen table with Jenny and Mary, and after being directed to the third, joins them there.

“I'm just sayin, it bears watching.” Jenny says. Dean sips his coffee and looks around. “What does?”

Sam slides a tablet across to him. “There's been a few cities that have had unexplained killings.”

Dean skims it slow and then looks up, fear sliding through him. “It's preceded by fog?”

Sam nods and he sees the same fear reflected in his brother’s eyes. Jenny is quiet and watching them and the smile he summons hurts.

_Castiel, we need you._

“We’ll take care of it,” Dean says brightly.

“Do you think it's her?” Sam asks.

Dean shrugs. He hates that he's the damn expert on Amara. “Tt'd line up with Cas getting hauled back upstairs. But I mean. It could be something else.”

Dear lord let it be something else. He wasn't even close to ready to tangle with Amara aagain.

“The worst was a town in Maine.”

Dean nods, already anxious to leave.

“I'm going to stay here,” Mary says into the silence.

He expects it. Castiel said she was struggling and no amount of pies she bakes will ever fix what is broken in her.

He's pretty sure he knew this is where they've been headed since she announced the family road trip.

Still. It stings. “It's not forever,” she says. “Or even for long. But I need to connect with the rest of my family. And you need to find out what happened in Maine.”

“Will you come home? After?”

It's Sam asking, asking the thing Dean can't bring himself to ask and he hates himself for that. Hates that he is so thrown by her announcement that Sam is the one asking the hard question. He catches his brother’s eye and sees the steady unflinching partner who’s had his back for more than a decade and it settles him.

“Yes. You are my family. I just. I need to see what else I left behind.” she watches them, carefully, and Dean smiles again. Gentle and reassuring this time.

She's worried about them and that makes all the difference.

A few hours later, they’ve eaten and Dean has showered. Sam gassed up the Impala and Jenny has packed the cooler full of sandwiches and cookies for them.

They’ve done everything they can, and now it’s time.

Mary hugs Sam first, and for a heartbeat, he’s full of tension, his body tight and startled against her for a long moment before he sighs and relaxes, pulling Mary closer suddenly, and she feels tears in her eyes. “Call us,” he says. “Just let us know how you are, ok?”

She nods, and lets her lips brush against his hair, and then she pulls away. “Take care of him for me, will you?”

He looks over at Dean, trying his damndest to look casual and radiating unease. “Yeah. Of course.”

Dean smiles, weak and shaky when she comes to him. “You don’t have to ask, Mom. When you’re ready, lemme know and I’ll be here. Ok?”

“I’m gonna be ok, baby. You go do your job, and don’t worry about me. I need this.”

He nods. “Ok.”

When he hugs her, he tries to not think about how much it feels like a goodbye. How it feels like he is being deserted, again.

This isn’t John. This isn’t her abandoning him. Distance isn’t a bad thing.

He glances at Sam, familiar as a heartbeat in the passenger seat as he puts Baby in gear.

Distance isn’t a bad thing, but it’s not something he’s ever gotten used to.

“You ok?” Sam asks, and Dean glances back out the rearview, at where Mary and Jenny are still standing.

Nods as he pulls out on the road, and fixes his gaze north.

And for once, he thinks he might be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, I'm not even gonna lie this is the most irregularly updated thing ever. BUT I AM WORKING ON IT. So. There's that.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm so excited about this story!!! What do you think so far?  
> If your interested you can follow me on Twitter (@NazareaAndrews) or my fandom rambling at www.foreverfangirl.com  
> Oh, quick note. This is published under my author name on Wattpad, as well. Nazarea Andrews. (You can read all about it at ForeverFangirl.com)  
> That's it!!  
> New chapters next Thursday! <3


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